An Open Letter to PBworks.com

From the PBworks.com site:
"PBworks is the world's largest provider of hosted business and educational workspaces. We host over 800,000 workspaces, serve millions of users per month, and 96% of PBworks business users would recommend PBworks to a friend."

Dear PBworks,

I recently created an account for myself, and a workspace for my group of 110 8th grade students. I have some personal experience using wikis and I was excited to integrate one into my classroom. After polling other educators on the subject, your service was recommended as a front runner in educational wiki products.

Only after I took the time to establish the wiki and create accounts for all of my students did I begin to run into problems. Confident that it was due only to my own learning curve, I set out to find the answers to my questions. Unfortunately, these problems seem to be on your end and not due to my inexperience with PBworks.

Problem #1 - No Password Reset
Your help section clearly states that passwords cannot be changed or recovered once an workspace account has been created. Why is this option unavailable? I wonder if members of the PBworks team have a background in middle school education. If so, they would know that the average middle level student practically forgets his/her own name after a long weekend. A password pre-selected by a teacher has no chance of enjoying a long-term stay in their developing brains.

Problem #2 - No Folder Hierarchy
In regard to organization, my plan had been to create a folder for each class section, and then nest other folders within it for different assignments or projects. This is as common organization framework for anyone using a Windows operating system, or any online user responsible for maintaining a website. It appears to be missing from Pbworks. While it is quite easy to create new folders to be displayed in the navigation bar, it is impossible to move them into other folders. Without this hierarchy system, it will be impossible to maintain a school year’s worth of student work.

A steering wheel is not considered an extra when purchasing a new car because it is something that simply needs to exist in order to make the product perform in the manner that is expected of it. I am not asking for advanced features. These are basic utilities that should come with a service such as yours.

In the end, I’ll probably suck it up and continue to use your service. After all, I am using a basic, free account. But I will certainly never pay for a service that has gaps in its back end that hinders deployment to my students. For a product that has adopted a freemium business model, you are not doing a very good job of enticing users to pay for membership.

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